Doff a hat to the Indian voter!

Offered a proper choice, the electorate shall punish thecorrupt, the incompetent, and the arrogant -- but also reward trueperformers. You cannot ask more of a democracy, says TVR Shenoy.

The magic number that separates Comrade Achuthanandan from OomenChandy is 1,479. No, I have not skipped a zero or two, all it took tokeep the Marxist veteran away from the chief minister's chair was onethousand, four hundred and seventy-nine votes.

The United Democratic Front won 72 seats in the newly-elected Kerala assembly to the Left Democratic Front's 68. But three constituenciesvoting the other way would have turned that verdict on its head.

Taking three seats away from the United Democratic Front and addingthem to the Left Democratic Front would reduce the Congress-ledalliance to 69 MLAs while raising the CPI-M's tally to 71seats. It would be the barest of majorities but VS Achuthanandanwould still be chief minister.

Now, consider the following facts from the Election Commission's site:

In Manalur PA Madhavan of the Congress beat Baby John of theCPI-M by 481 votes.

In Azhikode KM Shaji of the Muslim League beat M Prakashan Masterof the CPI-M by 493 votes.

In Parassala AT George of the Congress beat Anavoor Nagappan ofthe CPI-M by 505 votes.

Add those numbers - 481, 493, 505 - and you get 1,479.

Some 17 million votes cast -- and the governance of Kerala wasreally decided by a mere 1,479 of those!

Those were not the sole constituencies won -- or lost -- by slimmargins. In Kottayam, for instance, Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan ofthe Congress beat the CPI-M's VN Vasavan by all of 711 votes.

Whatever you may think of the man and his record as chief minister,it is an undeniable fact that VS Achuthanandan put up amagnificent fight. The CPI-M won 45 seats on its own -- theCongress won only 38 -- and most agree the Marxist veteran was the'Man of the Match'.

Kerala is soccer country, so it is a football metaphor that comes tomind: given that the Marxists were a house divided, how many UDF victories were actually CPI-M own-goals?

While Comrade Prakash Karat, Comrade Pinarayi Vijayan and theirfellow travellers introspect over that, let us turn to the otherstates. I must say that these threw up stunningly clear results, evenin the by-elections.

Taking nothing away from Mamata Banerjee's historic achievement inWest Bengal the cold numbers reveal that J Jayalalithaa pulled offan even more amazing feat in Tamil Nadu. While the Left Front lies intatters in the West Bengal assembly, the difference in actual votespolled is less striking -- about 42 per cent for the Left Front to roughly 48 per cent for Mamata Banerjee's grand alliance.

Do not forget either that Mamata Banerjee's victory was foreshadowedin the 2009 general election, when the Trinamool Congress won 19seats and her Congress ally won 6 more, a clear majority of the 42constituencies in West Bengal. Jayalalithaa had by far the toughertask -- to reverse the 2009 results in her own state, when the DMK won 18 seats and its Congress ally got 8 more, an absolute majorityof Tamil Nadu's 39 seats.

To understand the scale of the havoc caused by Hurricane Jayalalithaaconsider this: the Congress won more seats in the Lok Sabha than itmanaged to win in the assembly polls two years later -- a mere fiveseats. As for the DMK, Jayalalithaa has reduced it to such straitsthat it cannot even lay claim to the post of Leader of theOpposition; the office goes to 'Captain' Vijayakanth, Jayalalithaa'sally, whose Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazha won 29 assemblyseats to the DMK's 23.

The electorate delivered equally decisive mandates elsewhere, notjust in the assembly elections for Assam and for Puducherry but inthe by-elections

in Andhra Pradesh and in Karnataka. The fullimplications of the thrashing dealt out by Jagan Mohan Reddy to theCongress are yet to be felt but the (rather ignored) by-elections inKarnataka are also rather interesting.

By-polls were held in three seats, namely Jagalur, Bangarpet, andChennapatna. The Congress got two in the last assembly elections, theJanata Dal-Secular taking the third. In 2011 the BJP won allthree.

It is not easy to draw a lesson from this mix of elections andby-elections but there were a couple of common threads runningthrough them. Whether in West Bengal or Tamil Nadu, the voter turnedaway from what might be termed 'mal-governance', a poisonousconcoction of corruption and arrogance, while simultaneouslyrewarding 'good governance' in Assam.

That leaves my own home state. Was Kerala untouched by the wave ofrevulsion against abuse of power? In April I wrote in this columnthat the South -- meaning the principal states south of the Vindhyasand the Narmada -- failed the test in 1977. The political liberties weenjoy today are thanks to North India, which instinctively understoodthat democracy itself was at stake in 1977.

Did Kerala fail to understand the importance of good governance in 2011?

No, Kerala voted as it did because of lack of options. Whatever VS Achuthanandan's anti-corruption credentials, the fact is that he wasat loggerheads with his own party. On the other side you saw Congressleaders rushing to embrace a Balakrishna Pillai who had beensentenced to jail by the Supreme Court itself. Where could Keralavoters go?

When given a clear choice, Kerala's voters were right up there withthose of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Kottarakkara is the home seatof the aforementioned Balakrishna Pillai. His hand-picked nominee NN Murali was beaten by the CPI-M's P Aisha Potty by 20,592votes. (No three digit, sub-thousand margins here!)

And, as in Andhra Pradesh and Puducherry, resentful Keralitesreturned arrogance in kind; Rahul Gandhi's jibe about old men wasanswered by rejecting over half of his 16 'young' candidates.

The clearest message from this slew of elections is probably 'Trustthe voter!' Offered a proper choice, the electorate shall punish thecorrupt, the incompetent, and the arrogant -- but also reward trueperformers. You cannot ask more of a democracy.